I also question what value he brings to the company when the bot/RTA situation has gotten so apparently bad. To those referring to him as a pro being hired, or pro for the site.. he will not be playing on ACR. From my understanding, he's strictly just working for them. He lives in Australia, where ACR doesn't allow play (from what they say).

This headline got my attention as something great but then reading the press-release I see that this will have no impact. ACR has never acknowledged their bot problems, genuinely and consistently attempts to lie and gaslight anyone who points them out, and their support team is seemingly not allowed to ever acknowledge any issues. The owner of the company is a giant toolbox, and there is little short of a complete boycott that will ever change things. The company is complicit in the cheating by virtue of being notified and doing 0 about it, and Nanonoko is a legend but even with the best intentions he won't find a way to clean up a problem that is putting money in the pocket of the people running the site.
The single dumbest thing about ACR's management of the botting problem/general disregard for player issues is that if the site ran clean and smoothly it would generate exponentially larger sums as far as profits because for everyone poor shmuck who has no better options (but plays for a living) there are 10 players who want to play recreationally and can't because they're actively being cheated/have no recourse.

lol maybe let the aus players who are some of the biggest regs on the site know about this rule. Theyll prolly stop playing immediately.

But this is a good thing, as how could it be anything but a net positive. However Randy if youre the one blocking my withdrawals plz stop and talk with A, we had a good system going

It is my understanding that the WPN sites allow some "grandfathered" accounts to remain open and active from locations that they have since ceased accepting new player sign-ups from due to strict online gambling laws in countries like Australia. This could certainly be incorrect since they were still allowing US accounts to sign-up in States where their websites said it was prohibited.


100% agree. Randy might have the best of intentions in this role, but he will only be as effective as they allow him to be. I don't have high expectations for drastic changes anytime soon due to the sheer incompetence at the top.

I can give him a list of 20+ PLO BOTs at .5-1 to 3-6.

randy has always been a stand up dude, high integrity and transparent so hopefully this is a good step for acr. lord knows they need it

Over/under for him quitting... ACR just too nasty for a stand up guy to work with.

Don't see why they need to hire someone for security, only 10 or so bots have been found in the past few years. Clearly there is no bot problem on wpn The guy is just collecting a check so they can use his name.

This feels more like a PR damage control move, rather than an effort to affect real change. They must be losing a solid portion of their player base.

I'd love to be comfortable playing on this site again, trying to play actual poker, instead of just putting in massive volume for rake back/leaderboards, against a large population consistently making perfect decisions and somehow never tilting.

RTA or bot, really same difference. These dudes have had so many years of doing as they please on the Winning network, that they have it all down to a science at this point.

GL Randy, hopefully you prove the naysayers wrong.

This really is so random and funny to think about lol. I just picture Nano farting around at home, getting a random phone call from Nagy, and being offered this random job for a decent amount of money. He was prob just like “uhhh, sure?”.

Hating on him because he hasn’t played in a few years is ridiculous

What they should just continue to hire nameless faceless people who have “cyber security” experience and can’t even spell poker?

I think this is clearly a move in the right direction.

A poker player will have better chance at knowing WHAT to look for, even if they lack experience looking for things

I think the skepticism is warranted. Say what you will about Stars, but their security has always been top notch. You never hear about them or any legitimate poker site hiring retired pros to beef up security.

With ACR's bad reputation of listening to players who have outed bots and obvious colluders, it seems like instead of investing the software and people it would take to fix the problem, they just slapped a known name on it and called it good.

With that said, I am sure Nanonoko will do his best with the tools he has, but I wouldn't expect much.

Thinking that a hasbeen pro (yeah he WAS one of the best at his stakes) is going to suddenly make acr a better place is even more ridiculous. It's a nice litte pr trick to make the site look like they care but most likely nothing will change. And like you said a poker player will have a better chance and Lew is not a poker player anymore.

They should have hired Joe Ingram as a part time bot consultant

Well I don't live in luxury and it certainly isn't the early 2000's anymore but it's possible to grind out mid level wages at 50nl+ with bonuses/BEAST board ect.

That doesn't mean that the bots and RTA havn't gotten out of control though and there are some good threads on it already in the Internet Poker forum

I suppose it was written rather than it being audible: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2020/...rity-37008.htm

Tons of former (and current) poker pros work in game integrity/security for multiple sites

On the plus side:

- Mentality-wise, Randy seems to be a good-hearted, honest type of person, from what I've seen over the years, and the type of guy who would stand up for what's right and against what is wrong, if put to the test. Which is important in this type of a role.

- Although he was never a crusher at the nosebleeds, nor was that era similar enough to this era for it to matter much even if he was, which he wasn't, he still obviously did extremely well at midstakes even with his relatively systematic approach. Also, from what I understand, he wasn't just playing completely on autopilot, but actually did some read based plays or non pure-auto stuff even while 24 tabling, unless I'm mistaken. So, not just purely a brainless guy who just memorized a system and clicked buttons super fast, but rather, also was at least pretty decent at actual poker, even if not nosebleed level of phenomenal.

- Given what an insane volume of hands he was playing, and that he was playing at least a somewhat systematic style of play, albeit not totally, I would think one thing he probably got pretty good at was analyzing large samples of poker database data, as in his Pokertracker stats where he built up millions upon millions of hands of data from all those years of 24 tabling all day. Could be way off here, just guessing, but I'd think has to be like 70 or 80% chance of being true if not higher, given what he was doing poker-wise.

Which, if it is the case, could actually potentially be as useful, or maybe even more useful, in some ways, than someone who had more raw poker talent at the nosebleeds, but wasn't really a stats-analysis type of guy (key examples of this being guys like Phil Galfond or Cumicon, among others).

Then again, with how high the level of play is at high stakes and mid stakes these days, maybe it won't make up for that. But, it's still worth quite a bit I think.

Also, there could potentially be a "chain" effect, with him being the initial linchpin, where he knows what he knows, and also knows what he doesn't know, but is a smart guy in general (even in non-poker ways, that is), who would thus be able to identify who a random decent reggish player with good morals would be - not a high profile hire, but like an actual pragmatic hire I mean, for the nitty gritty details of handplay, who would be able to fill in the other half, where Randy is lacking, in terms of extremely high level of game theory influenced type of stuff.

So then you'd get Randy's (presumed) database analysis abilities and good morals and probably decent hiring additional people abilities, and then, ideally 1 or 2 additional hires, with Randy giving advice on who those hires should be, who can fill in whatever aspects Randy himself is lacking.

So, overall I think it might actually be a good start.

I think at worst it is mildly good. It can't really be a bad thing, I don't think. And best case scenario it is very good.

Maybe Randy could hire MCAChiTown as his 2nd in command.

Not even joking.

I think the two of them combined would actually be able to do quite a bit to clean the site up. Assuming ACR was willing to actually pull the trigger when necessary, that is.

I appreciate the support and compliment KatanaSoul, but I think there's an even more qualified person than myself right in this very thread in pmarrsouth. There might even be others in this thread.

I'm not saying I would never consider doing something like that in the future for a different network, but I don't think a network like the WPN would be looking to hire random anonymous 2+2 posters, especially not ones who have been very vocal critics of them.

I also expect Randy will do his best with the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean the network will give him access to everything he needs to be as effective as is necessary to clean up the games. If they hand over the reins to him then there might be some very positive changes. I'll certainly hope for the best, but I'll probably remain pessimistic until I actually see those positive changes.

Word.

Was Nano a 2p2er btw? (do you think he might be reading this thread?)

I'm pretty sure he had an account here using the same name as the one he played with, but I have no idea how much he visits the forum these days. The last post from that account was on Aug 2019.

It wouldn't make any noise publicitywise at all but I think a player like HandofGod (and other players that really dove into WPN's bot situation) would have made a bigger impact than Randy as a security consultant. The guy was updating a spreadsheet of bots that play on WPN on a weekly basis for years.

This is just a publicity stunt, good for Randy for getting that cheddar! Even as a fan of Randy's I don't think this will impact WPN's games much and I don't feel any more secure about the bot situation as a current WPN player. They just need to hire HandofGod....


Randy always seemed like an awesome dude tho so good for him.

If any of you guys know Randy in real life, or even just know someone who knows him, I suggest you try to get in contact with him and try to get him to read this thread, and get him to hear about some of these current top bot-spotter/RTA-spotter people that are really good at figuring out who is cheating.

Obviously all of this is only useful if ACR has an actual genuine interest in getting rid of the cheaters. I realize that. But, there is some chance (I know some people think it is a 0% chance, but, I think it's more like 30/70 or 50/50 or somewhere in that range) that they actually genuinely do want to clean their site up.

And, in the off chance that that is the case, then, if we get Randy to be aware of this thread and/or get some good recommendations to him of who the best people are at identifying bots and RTAers, I think a genuine, good-guy type of dude like Randy would have a surprisingly high chance of actually really taking it into consideration and possibly being able to hire or get consultations/advice etc from these guys to where it would make a serious difference.

So, yea those of you who know him directly or indirectly, it could potentially be a very good thing if you managed to get ahold of him about some of the stuff being discussed here.

He already took a request on his twitter account.

AnalogLatka
@troothbomber
·
Dec 24
@nanonoko
I read that you got hired by ACR. I play high stakes on the site as analog.latka....there is an already-banned user holding every table of high stakes NL, a known cheater who has been banned from other sites as well. Can you please address this ASAP?

Randy Lew
@nanonoko
·
Dec 25
Noted , happy holidays in the meantime

strong sn